With the proliferation of image and video editing applications and tools, it is becoming more difficult and time consuming to determine whether an image or a video is an original image or video or if the image or video has been altered in some manner. Alterations to the actual image or video content may take many forms from esthetic changes, such as adjusting color balance, changing video image brightness or the like, to changes that may be more nefarious, such as altering audio, replacing individuals with other individuals, adding or removing individuals, deleting scenes from or adding scenes to the image or video, or the like. In other cases, data related to the image or video may be altered. For example, metadata that may indicate a time, source, location or other information related to the image or video may also be altered for various reasons, both good and bad.
Various systems have been developed to prevent or at least indicate to a viewer of the image that the image is in a different state than when the image was originally provided to the distributor of the image. While these system may use cryptographic techniques or techniques involving blockchain technology, these systems appear to be limited to still images and do not seem applicable to video. Moreover, the techniques used by prior systems require altering of the original images by adding information used to authenticate the image file. This required alteration of the original images by the prior systems increases the opportunity for errors and surreptitious takeover of the authentication means.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and techniques for protecting original image and video (and audio) content authenticating data lineage without modifying original content and enabling authenticating data lineage of video data to also be authenticated.